Meet our UK-Türkiye Artists

We are pleased to announce the selected emerging artists for our UK-Türkiye exchange and residency We Gather Here Because We Must.

Hathaikan Kongaunraun, Edanur Seçim, Öykü Işıl Kışla and Maisie Pritchard. Photo credits: Omari Taylor (top left), Andrea Kiesendahl (top right)

We Gather Here Because We Must is an international exchange between Get It Done and AnkaraAks pairing four emerging artists from Türkiye and the UK, supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme.

The project brings together four early-career artists – two from the UK and two from Türkiye – to explore how playful, low-cost creative interventions can activate public space, encouraging connection, resilience and new ways of relating to our shared environment. Through an online exchange programme followed by an in-person residency in Ankara, artists will create a collaborative temporary installation in May 2026, testing ideas directly in public space using recycled and found materials.

On opposite ends of Europe, Ankara and Manchester are both cities experiencing rapid urban change, climate pressures, and a growing sense of disconnection from public space. While their contexts differ, both cities are home to young creatives who care deeply about their surroundings but often lack the time, resources or platforms to experiment in public space. This project responds by creating space for artists to learn together, share methods and test ideas in real-world settings.

The programme will run in four stages. From February to April 2026, artists will take part in an online exchange series led by Get It Done and Aks, exploring participatory design approaches, creative interventions and public space practices. This will be followed by a period of independent research and co-development, where artists work in cross-cultural pairs. In early May 2026, our UK artists will travel to Ankara for a short residency hosted by Aks in partnership with Bilkent University, culminating in the creation of a temporary public installation at Esat Semt Hali in Ankara’s Çankaya district. The project will conclude with a reflective zine and digital publication documenting the process, methods and learning from both cities.

MEET THE ARTISTS

Hathaikan Kongaunruan is a socially engaged artist, facilitator and producer based in Manchester (UK), whose work challenges how we assign value to materials and objects. Using DIY methods and found materials, her practice resists overconsumption by transforming the discarded into playful sculptures rooted in environmental care and resourcefulness. Influenced by her upbringing as a second-generation immigrant, revisiting Thailand deepened her exploration into folklore, rituals and spiritual symbols through an eco-feminist lens. Hathaikan invites viewers to slow down, notice the overlooked, and imagine new relationships with waste.

Edanur Seçim. Photo credit: Ece Özsel.

Edanur Seçim is a Turkish scenographer, artist and art mediator based in Ankara. She creates sensory and participatory experiences using methods such as walking, storytelling, movement and food to transform everyday urban spaces into sites of creative expression and connection. She holds an MA in Scenographic Design and Communication. Her thesis, Everyday as Stage: Participatory Performances, Scenographic Projects and Interventions in Public Spaces, explores how public spaces and daily actions become creative platforms. Her interdisciplinary practice engages themes of collectivity, migration, community, public space and memory.

Öykü Işıl Kışla is a visual artist and performer based in Ankara. Her practice treats the city as a living, thermal body, exploring how public space holds memory, breath, and collective presence. Working across performance and site-specific installation, she combines industrial materials with Anatolian traditions such as yazma and foya to examine insulation, exposure and survival in the context of climate crisis. Her work focuses on making erased or muted narratives perceptible, creating socially engaged interventions that invite shared nefes (breath) and communal resonance.

Maisie Pritchard.

Maisie Pritchard is an artist and creative facilitator living in Manchester with a studio at Paradise Works in Salford, and Yellowhammer in Stockport. Her practice is multifaceted, yet always focused on materials and making. She is interested in how artistic and design processes can crossover to generate functional and interactive artworks. Maisie invites people to interact, co-create and engage through shared acts of making. People’s participation often activates the work within both gallery and community contexts, and  sometimes through workshops that involve teaching, sharing and exchanging creative skills.

This project is led by Mimi Dearing, founder and director of Get It Done, specialising in producing co-created and community-led creative arts projects in the public realm, and Zeynep Ünsal, co-founder and Creative Director of Aks, trained architect and participatory urban design expert. It is supported by Rongwei Nie, an MA Creative and Cultural Industries student at the University of Manchester.

Speaking about the project, Mimi Dearing, director of Get It Done said:“We Gather Here Because We Must is a very exciting opportunity to develop cross-cultural responses to how we approach climate challenges. It starts from the idea that for many people, public space is the only space available to gather, test ideas and imagine alternatives. This project is about creating the conditions for artists to experiment across borders, and ask what creative acts in public space can achieve.”

British Council Türkiye Country Director, Denise Waddingham, said: “As Türkiye prepares to host COP31, this project comes at a significant moment. We are pleased to support this collaboration, which strengthens the UK–Türkiye partnership, and look forward to seeing how Get It Done and Ankara Aks work together to contribute to meaningful change.”

This project has been supported through the British Council Connections Through Culture 2026 programme. The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide. We do this through our work in arts and culture, education and the English language. We work with people in over 200 countries and territories and are on the ground in more than 100 countries.

www.britishcouncil.org

More information: https://www.getitdoneart.com/projects-1/we-gather-here-because-we-must

Contact: Mimi Dearing, info@getitdoneart.com